The Left Needs Bitcoin
Or how Bitcoin achieves progressive goals better than progressive policy
Bitcoin is widely unpopular among those who identify as politically left-leaning.
This is at once fascinating and infuriating to me, because it seems as plain as day that while Bitcoin is completely apolitical, it was designed to address the very things that progressives are concerned with.
Progressives correctly identify wealth inequality and the consolidation of corporate power. They understand that purchasing power is eroding for working people while the wealthy get wealthier.
They recognize that the financial system is rigged against ordinary citizens and that marginalized communities face systemic barriers to economic participation.
The diagnosis is spot-on, but the typical progressive prescription is completely backward. And there is a tool staring them right in the face, but it is either ignored or derided by the very people who should be embracing it.
I do get it. I am a reformed progressive. When I was young and idealistic, I voted for the Greens and Labour because I wanted the world to be a fairer place.
But as time went on, I felt that either I was no longer aligning with progressive beliefs, or the political left was drifting far too close to communism and authoritarianism for my comfort.
And when I understood what Bitcoin was, I finally realized that the answers could only be found outside of the state apparatus.
When progressives propose higher taxes on the wealthy, expanded government programs, and increased regulation as solutions to inequality, they’re asking the institutions that created these problems in the first place to fix them.
It’s like asking an arsonist to please put out his own fires.
A modern-day progressive advocates for social, economic, and political reform to create greater equality. They prioritize government intervention to correct systemic inequalities, support progressive taxation, and favor state-led programs to address market failures.
They believe in using the power of the state to achieve social justice, environmental action, and economic equality.
And this is where most Bitcoiners and progressives currently part company. We recognize the same problems. But for Bitcoiners, increase state involvement is not the answer.
The fatal flaw in this framework is that it misdiagnoses the root cause of the very problems progressives have correctly identified. Wealth inequality wasn’t created by insufficient state regulation or taxation.
If that were the case, then why has inequality grown while we have unprecedented taxation and a stifling regulatory environment?
Wealth inequality has been created by monetary manipulation. And you cannot solve a problem using the exact same mechanism that caused it.
This is where Bitcoin should be a shining beacon for progressives. It is not a right-wing plot or a speculative asset, but a monetary network that actually achieves progressive goals far better than ‘progressive’ government policy ever could.
Why Progressives Currently Reject Bitcoin
Before we get to why progressives need Bitcoin, we need to understand why they’ve been trained to hate it.
The narrative progressives hear from mainstream media and liberal politicians is simple: Bitcoin is bad for the environment. It’s associated with libertarians and right-wing politics. It’s a speculative bubble, a “get rich quick” scheme for tech bros. If corporations are adopting it, it must be another tool for the wealthy to exploit the poor.
This rejection isn’t accidental. As philosopher Troy Cross observed:
“Progressives have always pointed out injustices and critiqued systems of privilege. Yet, in a brilliant PR campaign, those very systems have enlisted progressives to protect themselves from being reformed or disrupted by an upstart technology.”
The institutions that benefit from the current financial architecture have successfully convinced progressives that Bitcoin is an enemy. Banks, governments, and the corporate-state partnership that progressives claim to oppose have somehow managed to position themselves as the good guys and Bitcoin as the threat.
It’s a remarkable feat of propaganda. The very people who correctly identified that banks privatize profits and socialize losses during the 2008 crisis now defend those same banks - directly or indirectly - against a technology that would make bailouts structurally impossible.
These objections miss what Bitcoin actually does. Let’s examine how Bitcoin advances the core values progressives claim to hold.
1. Financial Inclusion Without Gatekeepers
Progressives want to bank the unbanked. They propose government programs, regulations requiring banks to serve low-income communities, and subsidies to make financial services accessible.
Bitcoin does this without requiring permission from the institutions that excluded people in the first place.
No credit check required. No minimum balance. No proof of address, employment history, or government-issued ID. No geographic restrictions. Anyone with a phone and internet connection can access the Bitcoin network.
This isn’t just theoretical. In Kibera, often called Africa’s largest urban slum in Nairobi, Kenya, around 200 residents are using Bitcoin for daily purchases like vegetables.
The initiative, led by AfriBit Africa, serves a community where 80% of residents are unbanked. Vendors accept Bitcoin via mobile wallets without needing formal documentation or permanent addresses - barriers that have historically excluded them from traditional banking.
The model works because Bitcoin’s architecture doesn’t discriminate. Where banks require documentation that many Kibera residents simply don’t have, Bitcoin requires only a phone. Remittances that previously cost 10-15% in fees can now be sent directly, peer-to-peer, at a fraction of the cost.
In countries where banking infrastructure is very limited or discriminatory, Bitcoin provides access to global financial rails without requiring permission from any authority. Remittances that previously cost 10-15% in fees can now be sent peer-to-peer at a fraction of the cost.
Jason Maier explores this extensively in Chapter 5 of “A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin,” titled “How Bitcoin Helps Poor and Marginalized Communities.” The technology provides financial inclusion not as a favor granted by institutions, but as a fundamental right available to anyone.
2. Addresses Wealth Inequality at Its Source
Progressives correctly identify wealth inequality as a systemic problem. They see the data: the wealthy are getting wealthier at an accelerating rate while working-class purchasing power stagnates.
But they misdiagnose the cause.
The mechanism creating wealth inequality isn’t capitalism or greed. It’s the Cantillon effect - the phenomenon where newly created money enriches those closest to the money printer first, before prices adjust throughout the economy.
When the Federal Reserve creates new money through quantitative easing, that money flows first to banks, financial institutions, and those with assets. By the time it reaches working people through wages, prices have already adjusted upward.
The people who got the money first bought assets at yesterday’s prices, while the people who got it last are paying today’s inflated prices with yesterday’s wages.
This is why the wealth gap accelerates during periods of monetary expansion. It’s not a bug in the system - it’s the system working exactly as designed.
Progressives propose taxing the wealthy to redistribute this ill-gotten wealth. But taxation treats the symptom, not the disease. You cannot solve money-printing-created inequality by taking a percentage of the gains and redistributing it through the same government apparatus that printed the money in the first place.
The popular ‘tax the wealthy’ refrain also misses all the downsides of trying to do so. Wealth can be extremely difficult to quantify, and the wealthy already have plenty of opportunities and means to structure their businesses and wealth to protect them from onerous taxes.
Not only that, they are the most mobile segment of the population and tend to take their money, businesses, and ALL the tax they contribute with them when they depart a jurisdiction.
Bitcoin’s fixed supply removes the ability to create this inequality through monetary manipulation. With only 21 million bitcoin that will ever exist, no one can print more to enrich themselves at everyone else’s expense.
3. Protects Labor From Inflation
Wages lag inflation. This is the silent killer of paychecks that progressives should care about more than anything else.
When prices rise, wages eventually adjust - but not immediately, and rarely by the full amount. Workers spend months or years earning money that buys less than it did before. Their savings lose purchasing power. Their labor is devalued in real terms.
The progressive policy response is to raise the minimum wage. This only treats the symptom while ignoring the cause. Raising the minimum wage gives workers a temporary boost until inflation catches up again. Then the cycle repeats.
Bitcoin removes the mechanism that silently taxes labor through currency debasement. Workers who save in bitcoin will preserve their purchasing power over time rather than watching it erode. This isn’t ‘speculation’ or ‘an investment’ - it’s money that protects against systematic theft.
When inflation decouples from wage adjustments, workers lose. They work the same hours, produce the same value, and take home money that buys less. This wealth transfer from labor to asset holders is invisible, silent, and devastating. Bitcoin makes it impossible.
4. Removes Government as Arbiter of Financial Access
Progressives should value civil liberties. They should oppose government overreach. They should defend free speech and the right to dissent.
Yet they’re strangely silent when governments use financial infrastructure as a weapon against disfavored individuals and industries.
In a recent example, a French judge sitting on the International Criminal Court was sanctioned by the US after the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu over war crimes in Gaza.
What does this mean for an individual? It means they can no longer access the international banking system. The judge, Nicolas Guillou, can no longer use US-based Visa and Mastercard systems (among other things), and no European alternative is available.
The current financial system can be weaponized at a moment’s notice against those who ‘step out of line’.
Operation Chokepoint demonstrated how regulatory pressure on banks can be used to deny financial services to legal businesses the government doesn’t like. Debanking has been weaponized against political dissidents, activists, and anyone the state deems undesirable.
Bitcoin provides financial free speech. As long as you hold it in self-custody, no one can freeze your account or deny you access. No one needs to approve your transactions. You participate in the economy as a fundamental right, not as a privilege granted by authorities, on the condition that you toe the line.
This should matter to progressives who care about civil liberties and protecting vulnerable populations from government abuse. Financial censorship is censorship, and Bitcoin makes it impossible.
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5. Enables Resistance to Authoritarian Control
Progressives care about human rights and marginalized communities globally. They oppose authoritarian regimes. They support freedom movements worldwide.
Bitcoin allows people under authoritarian rule to preserve value and transact without state permission. In Venezuela, where hyperinflation destroyed the bolivar, Bitcoin enables people to protect their savings.
In Nigeria, where the government froze protesters' bank accounts, Bitcoin enabled activists to continue receiving support. In Afghanistan, where women are banned from banking, Bitcoin provides financial access outside state control.
This is what Maier means when he describes Bitcoin as
“…freedom money for billions of people living under authoritarian rule across the globe.”
The technology doesn’t care about your politics, your gender, your religion, or whether your government approves of you. It simply works.
For progressives who claim to care about global human rights and financial sovereignty for oppressed populations, Bitcoin delivers what policy promises cannot.
6. Removes the “Too Big to Fail” Problem
Progressives supported Occupy Wall Street. They understood that the 2008 financial crisis exposed a fundamental problem: banks privatize profits and socialize losses. When risky bets pay off, shareholders and executives get wealthy. When those same bets fail, taxpayers bail them out.
The progressive response was to demand better regulation and oversight. More rules. Stricter enforcement. Government agencies watching the banks more closely.
They only need look at current news to see what resulted. While banking regulations were increased, high-risk private credit was pushed into the shadow banking system, where another crisis is currently brewing.
This misses the structural problem. As long as banks are central to the monetary system and governments can create money to bail them out, the incentive structure remains unchanged.
“Too big to fail” isn’t a regulatory failure - it’s the inevitable result of a system where banks are systemically important and central banks can print money.
In fact, it is no accident that Bitcoin emerged from the ashes of the financial system in 2009. The genesis block (first Bitcoin block ever mined) has this headline embedded in it:
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."
This, of course, is a direct critique of the traditional banking system.
Maier explores this in Chapter 4: “Bitcoin vs. the Banks.” Bitcoin removes the need for banks as trusted intermediaries. There’s no central point of failure to rescue because there’s no central point of failure. The network is distributed, resilient, and doesn’t require bailouts.
Want to eliminate “too big to fail”? Stop rejecting the monetary system that was designed to solve this problem.
7. Constrains War Financing and the Military Industrial Complex
This is where progressive opposition to Bitcoin becomes most inexplicable.
Progressives generally oppose endless war. They critique military spending. They understand that the military-industrial complex diverts resources from social programs. They are against the ‘forever wars’ that cost countries billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives.
Yet they support (direclty or indirectly) the monetary system that makes all of this possible.
Modern wars are financed by debt and money printing, not by congressional votes. As Maier documents in Chapter 8 of his book, Congress has moved away from declaring war and voting on how to fund military operations. Instead, the government deploys “kinetic force anywhere” without democratic accountability for the financing.
The current Gulf conflict lays this doctrine out starkly.
This works because central banks can print money to buy government debt. Wars that would be impossible to fund through taxation alone become feasible when you can simply create money to pay for them.
Banks profit from this arrangement. When governments take on debt to fund military operations, banks and bondholders earn returns on that debt. War becomes a profitable investment opportunity for financial institutions.
Bitcoin has no entity that profits from war debt. The protocol cannot give someone a debt repayment. There’s no central bank to print money for military spending.
Research on Bitcoin’s impact on war financing suggests that a Bitcoin standard would “not be sufficient to enable states to debt-finance large-scale, conventional wars involving mass mobilization, extensive heavy armaments, and protracted deployments.”
Think about what this means. The mechanism that enables governments to fund endless war without democratic accountability would cease to function. Wars would require actual taxation, actual sacrifice from citizens, and actual democratic debate about whether the conflict is worth the cost.
Progressives who claim to care about peace should understand: war financing through debt and monetary expansion devalues currencies and people’s savings.
Every bomb dropped is paid for by silently stealing purchasing power from working people through inflation. This is inflicting a double violence - on the recipients of the bomb and then on the ordinary people forced to pay for it.
Bitcoin constrains the financial mechanism that enables endless war. That should matter to anyone who claims to value peace over profit.
8. Environmental Case: Bitcoin Mining as Climate Solution
Here’s where we address the elephant in the room.
“Bitcoin is bad for the environment” is what every progressive has likely heard. Maier identifies this as the number one objection progressives have to Bitcoin - so much so that it’s the longest chapter in his book.
The energy consumption narrative is everywhere. Mainstream media repeats it. Liberal politicians campaign on it. Climate activists cite it as proof that Bitcoin is incompatible with environmental responsibility.
They have it entirely backwards.
Bitcoin’s energy consumption isn’t the problem. It’s what makes Bitcoin the solution to renewable energy’s fundamental challenge.
Over 50% of the Bitcoin network is currently estimated to be powered by renewables, and the remaining fossil fuel usage includes flared gas (which would otherwise be wasted) and stranded methane, which can be converted and is actually emission-negative.
Would anyone who actiely rejects Bitcoin on the basis that it ‘wastes energy’, be willing to bet on how much of the traditional banking system, including all the negative externalities it creates like wars, is run predominantly on renewables and stranded energy?
The renewable energy problem Bitcoin solves:
Renewable energy has a fatal flaw: intermittency. Solar produces when the sun shines. Wind produces when the wind blows. Hydroelectric depends on water flow. None of these align perfectly with demand, and storing excess production is expensive and inefficient.
This makes renewable projects economically risky. You build a solar farm, it produces electricity when no one needs it, and that energy goes to waste. The project becomes unprofitable.
Bitcoin miners buy excess renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted. They provide guaranteed demand for renewable production, making projects economically viable. Mining operations are relocating to areas with renewable surplus - Iceland’s geothermal, Texas wind farms, hydroelectric facilities - specifically because they can monetize stranded energy.
Bitcoin mining is making renewable energy projects profitable that wouldn’t otherwise exist.
Methane capture:
Flared or vented methane is 80 times worse than CO2 for the environment. Oil fields and landfills release massive amounts of methane that previously had no economic use.
Bitcoin miners are capturing this methane, converting it to electricity, and using it to mine bitcoin. They’re turning an environmental disaster into economic productivity while preventing greenhouse gas emissions.
Grid stabilization:
Bitcoin miners can shut down instantly when the grid needs power elsewhere. They act as a “buyer of last resort” for excess energy, helping balance the grid during periods of variable renewable energy production. This flexibility incentivizes buildout of renewable infrastructure by providing guaranteed revenue during low-demand periods.
Compare to the alternative:
The environmental cost of Bitcoin mining should be measured against the environmental cost of the system it replaces. Traditional banking requires bank branches, ATMs, armored cars, data centers, and massive office buildings.
It requires military operations to secure oil supplies for dollar hegemony. The environmental footprint of the entire legacy financial system dwarfs Bitcoin’s energy use, rendering this argument absurd.
Progressives who care about climate should look at what Bitcoin mining enables for renewable energy, not just what it consumes. The technology is accelerating the renewable transition by helping solve the economic barrier that has held it back.
The Core Contradiction
Progressives want systemic change. They correctly identify that current systems concentrate wealth, exclude marginalized communities, enable war profiteering, and harm the environment.
Then they propose giving more power to the government-corporate partnership that created all of these problems.
They want to reduce corporate power while empowering the government apparatus that protects corporate monopolies through regulation.
They want financial justice while preserving the financial architecture that makes injustice inevitable.
They want to end war profiteering while supporting the monetary system that makes war profitable.
Bitcoin doesn’t require progressives to abandon their values, because they aren’t incompatible - they are complementary.
It requires recognizing that the problems they’ve correctly identified - wealth inequality, financial exclusion, war financing, environmental degradation - cannot be solved by the institutions that cause them.
The separation of money and state isn’t a right-wing position. It’s analogous to other separations progressives value, such as church and state. These separations exist to prevent abuse of power. And money is a power the state flagrantly abuses.
When money and state are joined, the state can print money to enrich insiders, fund wars without democratic consent, and silently confiscate purchasing power from workers. Separating them removes these mechanisms of abuse.
Examine Bitcoin on Its Merits
The technology is apolitical. It serves human freedom regardless of political affiliation.
Bitcoin doesn’t care if you’re progressive, conservative, libertarian, or socialist. It simply provides a monetary system that cannot be manipulated by authorities, inflated away by central banks, or weaponized against disfavored populations.
For progressives who genuinely care about economic equality, financial inclusion, peace, and environmental sustainability, Bitcoin achieves these goals more effectively than any government program or regulatory framework ever could.
Bitcoin aligns with progressive values But the question is whether progressives are willing to examine the evidence instead of accepting the narrative fed to them by the institutions they claim to oppose.
Those institutions have convinced progressives that Bitcoin is the enemy. They’ve done this because Bitcoin threatens their power. Not the power to help people - the power to control them.
Progressives should ask themselves: why are the banks, the Federal Reserve, and the government-corporate partnership so desperate to prevent Bitcoin adoption by ordinary people? Why do they participate in a propaganda campaign that has successfully convinced progressives that Bitcoin contradicts their values?
The answer is simple. Bitcoin exposes that the emperor has no clothes. It reveals that the inequality, exclusion, and injustice progressives correctly identify aren’t bugs in the system - they’re features.
But those features only work when people believe there’s no alternative.
And Bitcoin is the best alternative we have.
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⛔️ FINANCIAL DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, or legal advice. I am not a licensed financial advisor, accountant, or investment professional. The information shared in this post reflects my personal opinions and is based on publicly available data at the time of writing. All investment decisions—especially those involving Bitcoin or other digital assets—carry risk and should be made only after conducting your own due diligence and consulting with a qualified financial advisor. Never invest more than you can afford to lose. My views are my own and do not reflect those of any of my affiliate partners or sponsors.